Courtier for the Crowd: The Story of Ivy Lee, Who Taught the World Elite to Listen to People

For the people of the 21st century, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of working with public opinion. Any company or party has a PR manager on its staff. Abraham Lincoln once said, 'Public opinion is everything. A favorable... attitude from society guarantees success, while a lack of support condemns to failure. Therefore, whoever shapes public opinion penetrates deeper than those who make laws or render decisions. The enforcement of those laws and decisions depends on it.' But this was not always the case.

‘Courtier for the Crowd’ by Ray Eldon Haubert is a fascinating account of how the foundations of PR were laid through the biography of pioneer in public relations Ivy Ledbetter Lee, one of the most influential people of his time, set against the backdrop of crucial events in U.S. history at the intersection of the Victorian 19th and revolutionary 20th centuries. He developed programs for the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Red Cross, spoke with Churchill, Mussolini, and Hitler — and all U.S. presidents from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt. Ivy Lee appears to the reader not only as a professional in his field but also as a living person who can be mistaken and make errors.